Oh what a weekend! (sung like "Oh what a night")

Man what a great weekend I had!
It all started by buying some beads Friday after work. I got out at 1:00 and drove to the city to buy some beads from my friend who just opened City Beads.

Cute logo huh?! A percentage of the profits goes to promoting scientific research for women's health, BONUS!
Wow, I was like a kid in a candy store (surprize). She has a ton of seed beads not to mention crystals and aiko's and pearls Oh my! And so many colors I've never seen before. Oh how I love color!
I have a bag that I carry with me when I know I'm going to a bead store that has about 8 tubes of beads that I'd like to buy more of, if I can find them, bag empty!! Some of those tubes I've been trying to get more of for years! So thank you Lisa for having such a great selection of beads! You can also click here to go to her blog, she just started, but is planning to inform us about all that is new and exciting at City Beads. I was too much of a magpie to think about taking pictures, next time for sure!
I took the expressway all the way home, by myself, for the first time ever! Guess I all grown up now.
Saturdays anticipated class at Sur la Table was wonderful, the chef Kathy Skutecki was full of tricks and tips as well as funny!
It just so happens that one of the tricks is to let your egg whites stand at room temperature for three days!!
I guess the yolk is what goes bad. Well we ate our batch's and I'm still here to talk (type) about it. So I guess that's OK.

Good looking cookies (not mine), nice "foot" (thats the rough edge on the bottom)

Unfortunately that means I have to wait a few days to get my macaron on :-D We'll see how it goes, the class actually made me more nervous about making them, they are so finicky.

Stir too much, bad, stir too little, bad. Cook too much, bad. Cook too little, bad. It's a very precise thing. For me as long as there edible, there good!
The class broke up into 3 groups, each group making 2 kinds of macarons. Our group made Chocolate with white chocolate ganache fillling and rose extract with raspberry jam buttercream.

Here's a picture of our groups batch's. We switched up the filling and put the raspberry buttercream in to some of the chocolate shells, OMG, I will be making those again!
Once again I took the expressway 50 miles west for the first time, all by myself!! I felt so independent this weekend going here and there alone. Alone but not lonely, just like when I was single. Not that I want to be single again, I love the DH more than ever. It's just nice to know I'm still the independent women I was before, I just need to get off my butt and go!

Foodie Friday and Then Some

I forgot to mention in my last post that when we were at the Wisconsin Cutlery and Kitchen Supply store we purchased a boning knife! What a beauty. Used it on Tuesday to take the "silver skin" off a tenderloin, it was like slicing butter!

Click here to check them out on Amazon. Great knife for a small price.
The other thing we did on our long weekend was drive to Sur La Table to sign up for a cooking class.
It's a hour drive, and a little pricey for a class, but I'm going to learn how to make these little beauties!

French Macaroons!!!
And what's even better is I can make them with all the left-over egg whites from when I make ice cream! Your probably thinking, what so hard about making cookies. Well I've read a few blogs in my day and people say they are finicky little bugger's, so I'm hoping taking this class will take all the worry out of it for me. Then I'll get together with the other cooks in my family and teach them how to make them. Cause really, who wouldn't want small, low cal, flavorful pillows of smiles in there repertoire!
And maybe we'll make this first.

Hate to eat only cookies all day :-D